Junction City's Lochmead Dairy group is expanding its ice cream room to grow with the demand for recently-acquired Coconut Bliss ice cream.

The company is also expanding in other ways, from releasing a pint-sized version of its Lochmead-label ice cream to launching a $1.5 million initiative to build an anaerobic digester to turn cow waste into enough power for 200 houses.

The Gibsons have succeeded for 69 years of business because the family chooses to grow deliberately and independently — rather than striving to be bigger and faster than the competition, [one of the four third-generation Gibsons involved in the family enterprise, Jock] Gibson said. Nationally, the dairy industry has undergone rapid consolidation, as entities have merged into ever-bigger regional heavyweights.

In 1965, when Lochmead opened its bottling plant, there were seven milk bottling plants in Lane County, including two in Eugene, Jock Gibson said. Now, Lochmead is the only one left.

Read more at The Register-Guard.

For an in-depth look at Eugene's natural foods industry, see our June feature.